


Fog of Ages, Fog of Wars

by Meatball42



Category: Avengers Academy (Video Game), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Deja Vu, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Memory Alteration, Multiverse, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Time Travel, Timefog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-04 02:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13354227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: Steve’s first few months at Avengers Academy are a big adjustment. He has a lot to learn in this new world, and a lot to let go of. But something more sinister than grief is getting in his way.





	Fog of Ages, Fog of Wars

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [T.S. Stands for Tech Support.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13265937) by [kenshincha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenshincha/pseuds/kenshincha). 



> For those unfamiliar with Avengers Academy, the Timefog is a purple mist around the edges of the campus which is suspected to be responsible for a lot of confusing happenings around campus. For example, at one point a section of Timefog was cleared and the students discovered an Iron Man mask with a mysterious gouge through it- before Tony even finished building his suit.

Steve doesn’t remember much about the time he spent between fighting in the war and arriving at Avengers Academy. He remembers a battle against Hydra, and then… there was a cabin in the woods. And then he was at the school, standing in the middle of the quad in bright sunlight. Everything else is a blur. Steve has a vague recollection of cold, deep, penetrating cold, but how would the chill he sometimes feels in his bones relate to time travel? Everyone else thinks the Timefog has something to do with it, and well, everyone around here seems to know better than he does, so he doesn’t mention it.

When Steve arrives at the Academy, Pepper Potts shows him to Avengers Hall and instructs him in filling out the usual paperwork- roommate matching, dietary or other accommodation needs, any known supervillains who might attack the school looking for him- on a ‘tablet,’ a flat, rectangular device the size of a small clipboard. The weight is familiar in Steve’s hands, so he knows he’s used one before, but he pokes at the screen tentatively, feeling like its workings are slipping just beyond his grasp.

“Is everything alright, Captain?” Miss Potts asks, looking up from her own tablet.

“I- um. I can’t seem to recall how to use one of these, uh, tablets,” Steve explains, cheeks heating.

Miss Potts gives him a calculating look. “You passed several technological learning modules during your time at the Retreat, including basic touch-screens.”

He did what? “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Steve tells her. “I… guess I forget.” He shifts in his seat, uncomfortable. He’s not used to forgetting things.

Miss Potts hums. “Well, it could be a side effect of the Timefog. That happens sometimes. Would you like me to print out the rest so you can do it on paper?”

“I’d appreciate it,” says Steve, not even trying to hide his relief.

Once he finishes, Miss Potts leads him on a tour of the grounds. Although she keeps up a steady stream of conversation, she also pulls out a smaller version of the tablet that she manipulates with her thumbs as they walk.  Steve recognizes it as a ‘cell phone,’ a tiny handheld all-in-one kind of device. He sees Miss Potts communicate with various people, take notes, and even find the answers to questions just by poking at the screens a few times.

Steve is astounded by the power of these tools. His heart aches when he thinks of how much easier they would have made planning continent-wide defense tactics, tracking Hydra supply lines, synchronizing the Howling Commandos during missions, not to mention a thousand daily tasks back home. Steve has to squash the memories of the war far away while Miss Potts tours him around, but the thoughts only curdle in the back of his mind.

When Steve is finally shown to his new quarters- just his, for now; his roommate, Sam, will arrive sometime soon- he curls up on his side on his bed. He stares out the window at the shining edifice of Stark Tower next door, and tries to make himself believe that the men and women he fought alongside are all dead now. He stares blankly into the clear, blue sky until he falls asleep.

* * *

 

Steve tries his best, he really does. He knows the past is the past, and that he needs to concentrate on his training, on fighting Hydra, in the present. But he hears Peggy’s voice in his head, and it distracts him as Wasp explains again how to use the phone she got him. When he spars with Black Widow, she turns into Bucky, faster and better-trained than he was at first, and she pins him easily. Tony Stark shows him how the Robo Dojo works, and Steve gets hit in the face because he flinches every time Tony says something Howard wouldn’t say.

He still can’t remember how to get into the dorms. Miss Potts texts him his entry code every evening just as he approaches from the cafeteria, and every evening it takes him a few minutes to open the text and make it inside.

The problems with the tablets, and the cell phones, computers, skycycles, robots- _pretty much everything_ \- continues. The punching bag on the roof of the dorm is pretty much the only place Steve feels comfortable in this time. Everything else is tainted by the alien technology of the future: the helicopters he tests out for SHIELD have strange, sleek designs; half the students who use the Archives are there for the computer, and some of them have dates there while Steve tries to catch up on world history texts. Even the forge, where he goes to repair dents on his shield, is adjacent to a pit of magic; and as much as Loki and Iron Man like to argue which is superior (obnoxiously, in public areas) Steve can't much tell the difference between the Asgardian's feats and the unbelievable advances people made in technology while Steve was… not living through time.

There’s no avoiding it. Steve lives each day feeling like he’s undercover behind enemy lines. The mannerisms of these people are different, their way of life foreign, the tools they use indecipherable. Steve can only blend in as best he can, pretend everything is fine, but he feels like he’s falling apart inside his skin, being pulled in two between two different worlds.

It doesn’t help seeing the statues of Howard and Peggy on campus, having to walk by them every day as though he doesn’t still hear their voices in his head. It doesn’t help that Steve’s roommate Sam arrives back from his mission, and Steve remembers him, strongly, while at the same time he could swear he’d never seen Sam Wilson in his life. Sam is confused by that, too, since he remembers visiting Steve at the Retreat cabin and teaching him to use email- something else Steve can’t get the hang of and doesn’t remember learning.

“It’s probably just the Timefog,” Sam says, shrugging off Steve’s frustration as he forgets how to navigate to his email for the third time. “It happens to all of us, sometimes. I mean, I usually get déjà vu, but since you have less to remember in this time, maybe you’re getting, like, reverse déjà vu.”

Then Sam starts talking about the new girl, Kamala, and if Steve thinks he’s got a chance with her. Steve buries the moment and keeps a normal face as he cautions Sam to be a gentleman, but it comes back as soon as Sam’s gone.

It’s jarring, the way he can’t remember things, the way he remembers other things all too well, and worse even than that is the way no one seems to notice, or care. None of Steve’s teammates back home would have ignored such lapses, no one would have brushed anything off as ‘just another Timefog slip’. He feels like he’s sleepwalking through the future, both a part of it and divorced from reality, and it seems like the only people who take these things seriously are Black Widow and Iron Man.

Steve goes to Natasha, first. He catches her as she’s popping out of the ground one day, dressed in her all-white outfit that would really be better-suited for a colder climate. “Widow?” he calls quietly, aware that she prefers secrecy. “Do you have a minute?”

She gives him a suspicious look, as usual, but sneaks behind the edge of the quinjet hangar and raises an eyebrow.

“I think the Timefog is affecting my memory,” Steve explains, tentative. He knows he needs help, but it’s hard, admitting weakness to someone as hyper-confident as Natasha Romanov. “I remember my own time so vividly, but I can’t make heads or tails of the technology in this time. Normally, I have a fast learning curve.”

The Black Widow purses her lips. “The Timefog does affect memory. Has anything felt familiar, that shouldn’t?”

“Just the opposite.”

“Hmm.” She squints menacingly, but not at Steve. “I’ll hack into Fury’s files and see what I can find. In the meantime, don’t get in the way of any giant Hydra bots.”

Steve smiles. “No promises.”

He waits for the Widow to get back to him, even serving as a distraction for one of her incursions, but nothing ever seems to come of it.

The next step is talking to Iron Man, who regularly spends eight hours or more working on satellites to clear areas of the Timefog. Steve isn’t sure why that’s relevant; he isn’t sure why he’s latched onto the Timefog as an explanation for the way he can’t remember how to work the GPS on his phone, why the automatic doors at SHIELD HQ are so otherworldly, why whenever Falcon cracks a joke he’s reminded so strongly of Bucky that he wants to cry. Maybe it’s because all the other students blame the Timefog for everything.

Part of Steve thinks he’s gone crazy. The other half thinks he should trust his gut. In the end, he’s run himself ragged training twelve hours a day so he won’t have to think about the demons haunting him, and he finds himself in front of Stark Tower without conscious thought.

Steve walks up to Stark Tower and the doors slide open, illuminated from the inside. J.A.R.V.I.S. greets him and he rubs the back of his neck where his hairs are standing on end. Little cleaner bots skitter by him on the ground and an Iron Legion bot offers him a drink. Steve hasn’t felt more uncomfortable since he arrived on campus, but at the same time… he knows he’s come to the right place. He reaches Tony’s workshop, and it’s terrifying. Cluttered and shining and... familiar.

Steve’s never been here before, but his fingers dance across the keypad and the door slides open. He steps through it without thinking.

Tony is sitting on a bench in front of one of his holograms, but he looks up when Steve comes in. “Hey Cap!” he says with a grin. “You here to quality-test my new self-repairing sparring robots?”

Steve blinks. “I’m actually here to ask a favor… what sparring robots?”

Tony bounces up from his seat, immediately taking off toward the high ceilings of the lab the way he does when he’s excited and landing on the other side of the room, near a stable of powered-down bots. “Taskmaster gave me the idea for these. They’re supposed to apply an algorithm that learns your fighting style as you fight!”

A headache blooms into life behind Steve’s eyes. “That sounds… impressive, Tony. I’m sure they’ll come in handy.” He rubs at the bridge of his nose, blinking away the after-image of Tony flying across the workshop in just his boots and repulsors, as familiar as it would be if Steve had seen it a thousand times, not just once.

A soft touch on his elbow makes Steve look up into warm brown eyes. “You okay, Steve?” Tony asks.

Steve freezes. It’s the first time Tony’s ever said his name, but… it feels like they’ve known each other forever.

Tony frowns as Steve just stares at him. “Pull up a chair, tell the genius your troubles.” He tugs Steve toward a nearby couch.

Steve explains everything that’s been going on, the same as he did with Natasha. Tony nods when he repeats her conclusions. “I haven’t been looking into the Timefog as much as she has, but Professor Pym’s been working on it for a while. I know he and Jan worked on something a few months ago, when she was having these weird dreams about the Pym particles malfunctioning. I’ll go pull up their research.” He gives Steve a concerned look, hovering. “Have some cheese from the fridge. That always makes me feel better.” Then he buzzes off, blushing.

Steve nibbles on some cheese and crackers while Tony works. Time seems to stretch as he waits patiently, the way it something does here, two or four or eight hours going by in a flash, or fifteen minutes feeling like forever. The more he watches Tony, the more of those strange flashes of memory he gets, familiar and yet dream-like, of Tony dressed in cowboy boots, in the familiar clothes of the decade Steve left behind, in a more professional version of the dress suit than the one he sometimes wears to Club A.

Tony tells him he has to fetch something from Pym’s lab, calling the rest of the suit to him before flying off through a skylight. Steve wonders what it would be like to fly with him. When Tony gets back a few minutes later, there’s a moment where Steve’s surprised that Tony and Iron Man are the same person. It’s another strange, in-between image, but he concentrates on the gauntlet Tony never takes off and the world comes back into focus; Steve knows it could never be any other way.

The device Tony brought back from Pym needs a few moments of calibration, but in another slipslide of seconds, Steve’s standing up on a platform with Tony’s science-babble strangely comforting in the background. The next second, everything flips.

Tony’s focusing the device on him and Steve feels the strong urge to leap off the platform, to rush him like he’s an enemy. He’s so sure that Tony’s about to take away his memories, rather than fix them. Hatred crawls over his skin, as hot as if he’d run through a wall of fire, and his hands curl into fists and tremble.

And then Tony looks up, focus and friendliness in his warm brown eyes, and the strange compulsion vanishes like it was never there.

Tony turns on the device.

“You okay there, Cap?” Tony asks. He kneels in front of Steve where Steve has sat down on the edge of the platform.

Head spinning, Steve looks up. For an instant, he expects to see the Iron Man mask with startling blue eyes behind it, or a grown man with a full goatee. But it’s just Tony, with his wispy facial hair and concerned, earnest brown eyes.

Steve stares into those eyes for long seconds. He reaches out, puts a hand on Tony’s shoulder, and Tony’s eyes get wider.

“I’m alright, Shellhead,” Steve answers.

Tony breathes shakily. “We should… test you. Run tests. Now. To see if it worked.”

Steve nods and lets Tony pull him to his feet. They stand hand in hand, watching each other, for another long moment before Tony leads them to the nearest desk. He tears his gaze away from Steve long enough to grab a StarkPad and hand it to him.

“Anything?”

Steve brings up the internet, navigates to Google, and in a few seconds has pulled up a full episode of I Love Lucy on YouTube. He opens another tab and in a few seconds has started downloading Skype. Steve turns the Starkpad around to Tony.

“Excellent!” Tony cries. “It must have been the Timefog messing with your memory after all. Understandable, considering how you got here. I must be even more brilliant than I thought to crack this on the first try!”

“You’re not too bad,” Steve says, smiling indulgently. “I remember you showing me how to work this. I remember… lots of things.”

“That’s funny,” Tony replies, an odd look on his face. “Cause I don’t remember that one.”

“Are you sure?” Steve asks. “We were cooling down in your living room, after I gave you some hand-to-hand training.”

Tony’s eyes get big again. “We’ve never sparred! I mean, I’d like to! I mean-”

Steve shakes his head. It can’t be that important. “Probably just another Timefog slip,” he says good-naturedly. It’s far more important to sling an arm around Tony’s shoulders and head for the stairs. “Why don’t we try and jog your memory?”

Tony’s smile is radiant, nearly worshipful, and for a moment it gives Steve pause. Tony shouldn’t look at him like that. Tony should look at him like they’re equals. It’s off.

But Tony has started babbling about the self-repairing, learning robots he’s made for sparring, and Steve just has to put in his two cents about how Tony’s robots are amazing, sure, but teammates will always make better sparring partners, and Tony’s shoving him and arguing, and maybe everything isn’t exactly how it should be-

But it’s not too far off. Not too bad at all.

As they leave the workshop, Steve thinks he sees something out of the corner of his eye. A flash of purple, maybe?

Oh, well. Probably just another Timefog slip.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Out of Body Experience (The First Touches Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13634145) by [laireshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi)




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